This is Canada. - view

I spent my third year of Fine Art at Leeds University, studying in Vancouver, Canada. It was during this year that I started to truly appreciate photography as a creative tool with which to express the way I see the world. Moving away from the painting and charcoal work I had been doing, I focused my studies upon photography and film modules.

I started this group of photographs in Downtown, Eastside Vancouver: the most concentrated area of poverty in Canada and also the location of my working studio. I was intrigued by people's stories and how they were so different from anything I heard outside of their community. I met alternative media groups and was inspired by social documentary photographers such as Diane Arbus and Walker Evans. Using 35 mm film, I made portraits of all the people I met during this time on the streets of Vancouver.

When my course finished, I decided that I had been so involved in such a small area in such a huge country and I wanted to meet people in other street communities in Canadian cities. So I drove 2000 miles across Canada, from Vancouver to Toronto. The breathtaking landscapes, as you leave Vancouver, were such a stark contrast to the urban blocks I had been in for so long and as my journey continued in and out of cities I instinctively used 'black and white' film to photograph people in cities and colour to photograph the beautiful landscapes in between. 'Black and white' for the destinations and colour for the journey.

When I returned to England, I superimposed one onto another displacing people from their environment, blurring the boundaries between journey and destination and contrasting stark, street reality with the open and expansive landscapes of the countryside. By displacing both myself and my subjects, I explore and disrupt our understanding of the spaces and people around us - drawing, to the surface, underlying aspects of social interaction in present-day society.